Chapter Thirty-Five – Kayla #2
“Put the gun down,” he says, trying to be firm and dominant, but his dominance doesn’t land. I don’t feel that innate urge to listen to him, to do what he wants me to. His words, his command; it falls flat. Nothing but empty words with hot air behind them.
My breathing is erratic, but the singular breath I let out before my finger solidifies on the trigger is calm and slow, the kind of breath someone lets out before they make a decision that’ll change the course of their life.
I put the gun down, all right, after I squeeze that trigger.
The bullet that comes from the gun lands in my brother’s chest, and I think it’s fair to say no one in the room thought I would do it.
Not Hayden, not my brother, and not even me.
But pulling that trigger was like releasing myself from the cage I’ve been in for years.
Standing my ground and not listening to my brother was my way of finally saying no.
Honestly? It’s something I should’ve said before, but I had no backbone to speak of before I met Hayden and Bradford. The omega I am now is a stranger to the omega I used to be, and for the first time, I am glad to be her.
Jeremy sways. He glances down at his chest, and then he looks at me.
He opens his mouth to speak, but as the red blossoms on his shirt, all he does is spit out some blood.
Given how close he is to me, I’d say I hit something important with that bullet.
He tries to speak again, but in the end, all he does is fall to his knees, and seconds later he falls backward, his eyes on the ceiling. He does not try to talk again.
Hayden, back to applying pressure on his abdomen, stiffly walks over to me and, without saying a word, he takes the gun out of my hands. “You did good,” he says, and as I stare at the immobile body on the ground, I want to believe him.
He’s the second man I’ve seen die today.
Neither my brother nor Bradford’s father deserved the lives they had, as different as they were.
They were both bad men who did bad things, men who would gladly hurt those around them, the people they should love and care about the most. It would be the biggest lie to say the world will miss either of them.
“Come on,” Hayden says, “let’s get out of this room.” He walks around my brother, leading the way, my brother’s gun in one hand while his other applies pressure on his stomach. He hides his pain very well, but I imagine he’s feeling it more and more now.
I follow him, walking around my brother’s motionless body, and as I do so I try not to stare at his face too much, a face I won’t see ever again. Those glassy, unblinking eyes that still somehow hold rage in their depths.
Things would’ve been so different if my brother and I weren’t on our own, if we were born to a family who took care of us, who could show us and model what a family’s love should be.
In the hallway, Hayden winces and leans against the wall. He drops to the ground and sets my brother’s gun down, then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, dialing someone, and that someone picks up almost instantly.
“Pax,” Hayden says, “I need you to call an ambulance and the police. We got another situation at the Bentley estate.” He leans his head back on the wall. “Kayla’s brother was here. He shot me.”
My eyebrows lift. Hayden knew about Jeremy? It shouldn’t surprise me, since apparently he works for one of the biggest security firms around. They obviously have connections all over.
“He’s down,” he says. “Yeah, we’ll be here. Upstairs, eastern wing. Front door is unlocked. Thanks.” He ends the call and sets his phone next to my brother’s gun, and then his blue eyes move to me. “Just when I thought today couldn’t get any more exciting.”
I go to sit next to him. “Exciting? That’s what you call all this? You got shot.”
All he does is shrug. “It’s just a flesh wound, really.” Trying to make a joke of it, make light of the entire situation. Such a Hayden thing to do. “I’ll be fine.”
“You got shot because of me,” I whisper.
His free hand reaches for me. He sets it on my leg.
“You didn’t cause any of this. He did, by coming here.
By bringing that gun. Did you know your brother had a gun?
” When I shake my head no, he adds, “Doesn’t matter much now.
Oh, and for the record, there’s no one else I’d rather take a bullet for. ”
I don’t want him to take a bullet for me. I don’t want any of the guys to put themselves in danger’s way just to save me. The bloody wound in Hayden’s abdomen is a reminder of how mortal we all are, and having just found them, I do not want to lose them that fast.
“No more bullets,” I whisper.
He leans in to me and places a soft peck on my cheek—and then he winces and straightens himself out.
“I wouldn’t be opposed to that,” he says with a gentle grin.
“This thing hurts. Can you believe I’ve never been shot before?
Zero out of zero, by the way, do not recommend.
” Still trying to make light of the situation.
I might laugh if he wasn’t currently sitting next to me, bleeding.
When I don’t say anything, he tells me, “You really did good. You stood up for yourself. Honestly—” He pauses as he sucks in a hard breath. “—one of these days I was going to track that guy down myself.”
Quietly, I say, “I figured that’s how you knew who he was.”
Hayden shrugs once. “A perk of working who I work for.”
“I didn’t know he’d be here. He must’ve walked from the bus stop, like I did before.” As I say it, it dawns on me just how intent Jeremy must’ve been to get here, all to reach me… to teach me a lesson. “I can’t believe it.”
Should I be crying? Should I be upset that I just killed my own brother? Sure, my brother was an asshole who hurt me time and time again, but doesn’t killing him make me just like him? Maybe I’m reading too much into it. I feel remarkably calm, all things considered.
His hand squeezes my knee. “You’re probably in shock. It’s okay to be in shock. Everything happened so fast… things might not really set in until later.” He winces. “Unfortunately, it looks like I might have a stay in the hospital in my future.”
“Can I stay with you?” The thought of not being able to be with him while he heals, if he has to have surgery, makes my heart ache. With Bradford behind bars for a while, I genuinely don’t know where I’d go if Hayden or the hospital says no.
“I’ll do whatever I have to to make sure you can stay with me, no matter what.” His words of comfort relax me, and I lean my head on his arm as we sit there and wait.
Well, this day just went from bad to worse.
The villain in my story, and the villain in Bradford’s; both gone in a matter of hours.
It’s a bizarre feeling, one I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to.
I spent nearly my whole life under my brother’s thumb, taking the brunt of his anger, and the same can be said of Bradford and his father—though for a much longer period of time.
He did that for me. I’ll never forget that. He came for me, when it mattered most. God, I miss him already.
“Where do you think we’ll go from here?” I ask Hayden.
“After the hospital, I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my life with you, if you’ll let me. Not exactly the proposal of your dreams, I bet, with me sitting here bleeding with a bullet lodged in me, but—”
I interrupt his rambling and say the only thing I can: “I love you.”
He tenses up, or at least I think he does.
After a long second, I realize he’s not tensing but actually moving: he moves so that I have to pick my head up off his arm, and then he leans over to me and presses his lips on mine—just for a quick moment, because not soon after that does he wince and straighten himself out.
“I need to stop bending like that,” he jokes. “But I don’t care. The pain was worth it. I love you too, Kayla.”
My lips tingle from his kiss, and all I can do is sit there beside him and smile up at him while the butterflies go crazy in my belly. I don’t know what’ll happen from here on out, but I do know one thing.
Today marks the start of a new future, one I never dreamt.